"I Am The Borg.”

"I am the beginning. The end. The one who is many."

This 32mm scale resin miniature of the Borg Queen is produced by “Modiphius Entertainment” and can be found inside the company's eight-figure strong Iconic Villains boxed set for “Star Trek Adventures”. Named by the Federation scientists who discovered her existence, this “central nexus for the Borg Collective” made her first appearance in the November 1996 motion picture “Star Trek: First Contact” and was played by actress Alice Krige.

Designated Species 125, the figure was initially primed using a double-coat of “Citadel” Abaddon Black, heavily dry-brushed with “Vallejo” Heavy Charcoal and ‘highlighted’ with a much lighter dry-brush of “Citadel” Ironbreaker. However, having compared the ‘look’ of this colour scheme with that of the film character’s actual costume, I realised that my normal Borg recipe contained far too much silver, and that the Queen’s (latex) bio-mechanical body suit designed by Deborah Everton was actually predominantly black with a little gold showing in places.

The Borg Queen leads an attack against a Romulan raiding party

Resultantly, I applied some watered down “Citadel” Abaddon Black over the entire model and (once again) heavily dry-brushed the female drone co-ordinator using some “Vallejo” Heavy Charcoal. I then ‘picked out’ a few of the cybernetic entity’s synthetic implants with “Vallejo” Brass and shaded them using a little Strong Tone Quickshade by “The Army Painter”. 

Despite the Borg Queen’s mottled skin-tone in the movie being quite pink in comparison to the dead-like grey of her drones, I decided to still paint her bare head in the same “Vallejo” Heavy Bluegrey I’ve used for the rest of my assimilating extra-terrestrials. This, along with the female humanoid’s black body suit, limbs and (gloved) hands were all later washed with “Citadel” Nuln Oil.

"Warcry" WIPs - These two Iron Golems are all having their metalwork 'picked out' and shaded

Finally, I ‘picked out’ the metallic tubing encircling the model’s head with “Citadel” Ironbreaker, and drenched them in Nuln Oil. This just left me with the conundrum as to ‘spotting’ the miniature’s eyes, and having unsuccessfully tried to dot the figure’s incredibly tiny pupils a few times without making her look cross-eyed, I settled upon them being pure “Citadel” Abaddon Black.

With the perfect “blending of the organic with synthetic” completed, I have momentarily turned my attention back to my Iron Golems for “Warcry”. Now I’ve finally settled upon an agreeable palette for the plastic warriors’ red and brass-coloured armour, I’m starting to quite quickly plough through my “Game Workshop” warband’s ranks, with both its Ogre Breacher and Dwarf Armator heading towards completion…